For all l you psych nerds out here

Been through some self inflicted bad times but I finally found my problem.

I’ve been reading mark Manson and some stoicism to make better sense of my life and my main reason to dig into those two was because I was relying too much on pleasure, instant gratification. and jt was making my life miserable.

My life changed when I was introduced to the concept of values (mind you I’m young and this was the first time i discovered this concept )

Mark Manson says which I agree with, that bad emotions result due to bad values. Eg I had many bad values but one characteristic common to all those was these values were out of my control. And acc to mark this was a bad value to pursue .

Then I got introduced to the dichotomy of control in stoicism. I was so happy to have reaffirmed my newly instilled beliefs.

I felt confident, wasn’t relaying on instant dopamine. Rollos the ratio male also seemed to contribute and strengthen such belief. The reason I use the world "seemed “ here is because I have a vivid memory of having an epiphany after reading half of the book after that I quit the book cause of daily humdrum and not being able to keep up my reading habit ( this should’ve been my clue to slipping back to thr pleasure cycle ) But I am dedicated to read that book again form today.

Back on the topic, all was going good until I discovered something called PUA.

Honestly , I know nothing about it apart from its definition and the reason that is all I know is because I haven’t been able to find time to read the game which is supposedly the gateway to pua?

But here comes the part where I now have the knowledge (based on the mere defn of pua ) that something out there exists (literature , tricks etc ) which when practiced will land me into the world of pleasure atleast in the aspect of women.

The old acquired good values (under my control ) were now thrown out the window (subconsciously) because , because apparently the value (f*king chicks ) that I considered "bad" ( in terms of being out of my control ) , are now theoretically "in my control " and hence "good values " (acc to mark Manson and stoicism; my only two gurus ) and on top of that chasing this value provides me pleasure.

Now my lizard brain won’t just look at it rationally. I’m in college rn and I’ve been making these rational arguments against myself that I shouldn’t learn pua cause it’ll be a waste of my precious time that isn’t gonna come back but it’s called lizard brain for a reason.

This is the dilemma

A bit of vent with a question

How do you use trp posts?

I’ve recently quit trp on Reddit since it had endless high quality attractive posts which were but it all left me feeling that there’s so much to know and I couldn’t read it all let alone implement it.

It was like I wasn’t using it , it was using me. Whatever I tried to do in the day , my focus diverted to remind myself what great post I might be reading right now rather than going about my own day to day work How do you approach trp posts so that you don’t fall in this dopamine cycle.

I am aware I’m exuding the typical beta scarcity mindset because the mere thought of reading more shows that I might lack something and I am trying to make up for it but believe me I’m not some incel lol. I’ve got couple plates spinning rn , I’m not trying to boast here but what I’m trying hard to understand is I don’t really need to read a lot of that stuff as of rn bit still I’m tempted to.

Do any of you read those posts just for fun because that’s how I started and it was a downward spiral from there